


Wild Rover No More

by BroadwayBaggins



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Ireland, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 19:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10367628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BroadwayBaggins/pseuds/BroadwayBaggins
Summary: Bridget Brannan cares for a wounded drummer boy.





	

After that blasted letter had arrived, that one piece of grubby paper that had torn her life in two, Bridget Brannan threw herself into her work.

It wasn’t hard–they were short-handed with Nurse Mary gone (Dragon Dix had yet to send along a replacement, which most of the hospital staff took as a good sign, a sign that their beloved Boston Baroness would be well and returned to them soon) and the wards at Mansion House were just about full to bursting in the wake of Antietam. There was always something to do, some way to keep busy, whether it was leading visitors through the hospital in the hopes that they might claim one of the wounded or distributing meals throughout the wards or taking inventory of the medical supplies for the umpteenth time. Bridget didn’t care. Even the most tedious and mundane tasks that the hospital had to offer, she now volunteered for quickly and without complaint. It was far better than being allowed to stop and think, and grieve for what she had lost, her last surviving boy gone in the most unimaginable way…

Idle hands were the Devil’s playground, so they said, and an idle mind meant unwelcome thoughts might come wandering in. So Bridget approached every task with a fervor, determined to keep occupied so that her Declan’s face would not be the only thing she saw every time she closed her eyes.

She was traversing the ward with Miss Green that particular afternoon, ladling up stew for the boys who could stomach it. Bridget had taken the young girl under her wing, as it were, since her move to Mansion House, and they found themselves working together more often than not these days. Bridget knew she must be a poor substitute for the girl’s mother–and for Miss Phinney, as well–but it gave her a sense of comfort to have the child near. She and Miss Hastings had been on somewhat shaky ground since the letter arrived, something she knew that she would have to atone for in the future, but for now that time seemed very far away. She looked up just as the Englishwoman breezed past her in a cloud of camphor and schemes, her saffron-colored skirts disappearing around a corner. She would speak to her another time, perhaps.

“Miss?”

It took Bridget a moment to realize that the tiny voice had spoken to her. It had been years since she had been addressed such, and at first she was certain that whoever it was must be speaking to Miss Green, or even Miss Hastings. But when she glanced around the ward, her eyes alighted on a single green eye staring pleadingly into her own, and her heart dropped.

Miss Hastings had not been the only one that Bridget Brannan had been avoiding.

He had been brought in on one of the wagons from Antietam, shaking with fever and barely alive. No one seemed to know his name at first, but a man brought in with him had identified him as the drummer boy of his regiment (the man had since succumbed to his own injuries). His first night at Mansion House they had been certain that they would lose him, but his fever had broken early and he lived to see another sunrise. There was some debate about his age–he swore up and down he was fourteen, but his features and voice betrayed him as closer to twelve. From the rumors Bridget had heard, this put him on the older side of some drummer boys that now found themselves in the thick of battle. He had refused to give his name at first, which suggested that he was a runaway, Only when another man from the regiment had given it did they learn the identity of their patient–Tommy Flynn from Boston. Boston, by way of Ireland.

The accent was easy to miss at first–Bridget had long been away from her home country and the dialects of the men quartered at Mansion House were many. Only on certain words were the drummer boy’s origins evident, and when Bridget had heard him speak for the first time, had heard that sweet little lilt as he asked Miss Green for a drink of water, all the color had drained from the matron’s face. Suddenly on that bed before her she did not see a wounded drummer boy, but her own child. Suddenly, her ghosts had come back to haunt her.

She had fled without offering an explanation.

Now, though, with Miss Hastings gone and Miss Green at the other end of the room, Bridget was alone. Her eyes swept over him, looking so small laying there on that little cot. A bandage covered his right eye–Doctor Foster had been able to save it, though whether it was in working order was yet unknown–but the two fingers on his right hand had been a total loss, and the shrapnel in his side was giving the doctor cause to worry. How such a small child had been so utterly wounded was beyond them–he refused to talk about the battle, only insisting that he had done his duty and only dropped his drum once he’d been shot. That stubborn streak, when she’d heard Foster laughing about it with Miss Green and the chaplain, had reminded Bridget so much of her boy she almost couldn’t breathe.

She shook the thought away before it could take root, focusing on the boy before her. He was still staring at her, although a bit bewildered now, no doubt wondering why she had not answered him right away. She narrowed her eyes as if she were about to scold, pointing a finger at him. “That’s _Matron_ to you, boy, or _Ma’am_ if ye cannot manage that.”

“Sorry.” He looked down.

“I’m only fooling. Is there something you need? Something I can get you?”

He shook his head, suddenly shy. “I…no. You just…you reminded me of somebody.”

“Who might that be?”

He shook his head. 

“Come on now, no need to be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid!”

He spoke with such vehemence that he almost sat bolt upright in the bed, and immediately he let out a squeak of pain. Bridget was beside him in an instant, whispering soothing words to him, guiding him to lay back down and bringing a tin cup to his lips. “Easy now. Easy. That’s it. Be careful, now. Doctor Foster spent a long time putting you back together. Don’t want to be undoing all of his hard work now, do you?”

It was getting easier to speak to him now. The similarities to her son were still like a knife to the gut, but it meant that Bridget knew how to soothe him, how to talk to him. She smiled and smoothed his hair back from his forehead, his skin now paler than the sheet beneath him.

He gave a weak nod.

“Now, since you’re just lying here, why don’t you tell me who it was i reminded you of?”

“My gran,” he whispered, coughing weakly. Bridget’s body tensed, ready to spring into action again, but Tommy soon relaxed, sighing as he fell back against the sheets. “My gran back home.”

“Do you love your gran?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I’ll choose to take that as a compliment, then, and not a comment on my age.” She smiled, hoping the boy would do the same. He did not. “Your gran back home in Boston?”

“No, in…” he paused, seeming to fold in on himself. “In Ireland.”

“Now, why did you say it like that? What’s wrong with Ireland?”

“Nothing. Some of the men don’t like it, that’s all.”

“Well, that’s their business then, not yours, so don’t you waste another minute worrying about it. I’m from Ireland, and I’m glad of it. And do you think any of those men are going to give me grief over it if they don’t agree?”

“No, ma’am.”

“That’s right. Because I’m proud of where I come from, and I don’t care who knows it. I am Irish, and I am proud.”

“Me too,” the boy said determinedly. A bit of the color had returned to his face, and he was fighting a smile. “Only…I don’t remember it much.”

“When did you leave?”

“I was really little. I don’t remember. Five, maybe.” It was not as long ago as Tommy seemed to think, and Bridget’s heart felt like it was being squeezed. “After Mam went to Heaven. We had to leave her over there. Da said we’d have a better life in America.”

His tone seemed to suggest that had not been the case. Bridget swiftly changed the subject. “What do you remember?”

Tommy thought for a moment, closing his good eye. “The rain. We don’t get rain like it in Boston, not the soft rain Ireland had. Just heavy rain that blows through and soaks everything. Snow, too. I don’t think it snowed much in Ireland. And…green. I remember green everywhere. I remember waking up and hearing the cows at our neighbor’s farm across the way. I remember the way the air used to smell in the mornings–at least, I think I do. And I remember my mam singing to me. She used to sing me to sleep.”

Bridget smiled, gazing at the boy with eyes that had grown suddenly misty. “All good mothers do.”

“I don’t remember the songs, though.”

“May I sing to you?” Bridget asked before she could stop herself. “My son used to love it when I sang the old songs to him. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind sharing them with you. It might give you a little piece of home.”

“Ain’t got no home now,” Tommy whispered, his good eye filling with tears. “I left it. I ran away. I ran away and now…”

She reached for his small hand, squeezing it in hers. “I know, Tommy. I know.”

And she opened her mouth and began to sing to him, the Gaelic as familiar to her as her own name, the ward filling with the sound of her boy’s favorite lullaby.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my attempt at a fic in honor of Saint Patrick's Day. I will admit I am a bit disappointed that the show went with the "coward/drunken Irish" stereotype for Declan Branna, who could have been a great character if given the chance. However, my creativity was such last night that I had trouble coming up with a way to spare him his fate, so this story keeps that the same.
> 
> Hundreds of young boys between the ages of ten and fourteen served in the Civil War as drummer boys. In fact, the youngest person killed in the Civil War was a 13-year-old drummer boy named Charles King who was killed at Antietam. Some drummer boys lied about their age, so it was possible to have a boy as young as eight or nine serving as drummers in both armies. Thousands of Irish immigrants (and, it should be noted, many German ones too) served in the Civil War on both sides.
> 
> The title comes from the Irish folk song "Wild Rover."


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